


a turn of reality

by tucson604



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (temporary death though), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Character Death, F/M, Post-Canon, Soul mate AU with color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tucson604/pseuds/tucson604
Summary: "It’s only in her seventh year, the one she took mostly alone, after it all, that Hermione discovers that a Time Turner is even more formidable than Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore explained. It’s unclear whether the omission of its power was due to the obscurity of the research that she finds—through a Ministry foreign exchange grant she is allowed into the Romanian archives to hunt down the diaries of one Samantha Noguchi—or because of Albus Dumbledore’s old penchant for trying to hoard information until it became relevant to whatever war he assumed he was winning. Regardless, she reads and reads and reads, trying to understand the scribbles and diagrams and fuddled anecdotes on the parchment."[A story told in short drabbles, that explores a variety of AUs]





	1. Chapter 1

_It Starts_

It’s only in her seventh year, the one she took mostly alone, after it all, that Hermione discovers that a Time Turner is even more formidable than Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore explained. It’s unclear whether the omission of its power was due to the obscurity of the research that she finds—through a Ministry foreign exchange grant she is allowed into the Romanian archives to hunt down the diaries of one Samantha Noguchi—or because of Albus Dumbledore’s old penchant for trying to hoard information until it became relevant to whatever war he assumed he was winning. Regardless, she reads and reads and reads, trying to understand the scribbles and diagrams and fuddled anecdotes on the parchment.

Ron is jealous of her time in Romania. Or, more accurately, Ron is jealous that she finds her studies compelling, that being in school without him is still fulfilling.

He writes her a letter that Pigwidgeon delivers into her lap on a Sunday in March: _Hermione, I’ve barely heard from you for weeks. Thought you said this long distance thing would be easy, but blimey, I dunno if I agree. I thought maybe you’d want to come home for a bit. I’m around, you can always Apparate over. We could—I dunno, do something. Be a couple for once. George keeps asking Charlie about you instead of finding out anything from me. Are you really spending all that time with my brother?_

She understands, as much as she’d like not to. In a way she’d like to call him a boorish misogynist and be done with it. But it isn’t like that. After so many years of knowing him, she knows that he finds her tenacity for acquiring knowledge endearing. She knows that vapidity doesn’t interest him as much as flatter him, and when he’s in the mood, he’d rather listen to her quiet lectures on magical theory while they both lean on Molly Weasley’s excessively plumped pillows, their lips and eyelashes almost brushing.

And more than that, she knows the scar on her arm haunts him even while she embraces his shoulders. The guilt of leaving her in a forest with evil talismans, almost alone, since Harry was so focused and angry and terrified and always searching, underpins his anxiety when he remembers Fred or Remus or even Lavender Brown who he’d once held and now couldn’t even see properly in his memory. She knows his jealousy comes from his fear that she isn’t as affected as him, that she can go on with her life, and eventually all the past will fall away, including him.

She writes:  _Ron, I know this is all tough on you, but and stops._

Sometimes she wonders if they could’ve fallen in love at all without all the evil. If they’d been made for each other through the trauma, but if they’d had another choice they’d have preferred to fall for other people. Viktor Krum, she suggests to herself. Or even Charlie, though she doesn’t really feel much for him than mild attraction. And for Ron? Maybe someone steadier, a Hannah Abbott type. It frightens her that she can consider these scenarios without the jealousy she felt even just two years ago. She wants, sometimes more than anything, sometimes even when she is sitting near the fireplace, the glow of flames flickering across her skin, the quill fluid in her fist as she thinks and strategizes and analyzes on the page, to be with Ron. And yet, she doubts. She doubts that this is the life that will allow them to have a future that they won’t regret. It was easier when they were younger—not just in age but in understanding, when their world was just school and the Dark Lord and the idea that After the Battle would be an upward surge, happiness.

Truthfully, she went to Romania because the idea of the Time Turner as more than a manipulator of time, but also as a manipulator of circumstance In the journal, made her wonder too much to sleep. 

Samantha Noguchi writes: _When I learned that there were other realities for me to traverse, I thought there might be a better one that I could stay in. Or, at the very least, the unfolding of new pathways that I could walk on in my current life. Maybe, just maybe, the world I knew was alterable enough to make it seem salvageable._


	2. Chapter 2

_First Reality_

She’s allowed as many worlds as she wants with the time turner.

In the notes, Samantha Noguchi explains: _I never left the reality I’d been born into entirely, for fear that I wouldn’t be able to return, yes, but more that my disappearance would be noticeable. I didn’t have many friends, no one I trusted enough to tell me whether or not I was still as a statue in one life, or if my body just ceased to exist. I taught myself to be of two or more minds wherever I was._

Hermione supposes she could ask Luna or Ginny to watch her flat when she disappears, to see if all traces of her just go. But that would mean asking them to come to Romania and then admitting to them that her journey through is centered on Ron, who they all care about, but who isn’t supposed to be a problem. They’d ask, otherwise, why she hadn’t just asked him to observe. But whenever she talks about him, the person she’s speaking to grabs her hand or her slings an arm around her shoulder and says, “I always knew about you two, from day one, really.”

She turns worlds and ventures into realities she hadn’t expected. One where they are both Muggle spies. One where she has wings hidden under a trench coat, another where its him who keeps them tamped down under a Weasley sweater. There is even a reality in which she is Harry’s sibling, and Ron can’t help but covet his best friend’s sister. In each of these, she and Ron end up sharing secret handholds. They trace the lines of each others’ palms. She has yet to find a reality that she prefers, though some are safer than the one she first lived in.

The contrast between her Ron and some other Ron is starkest during a weekend in early April when he makes a plan to visit her. It’s the first time her body shifts between two Rons instead of just reading his letters or communicating through the fireplace.

 

* * *

 

Before she opens her eyes, she feels the warm wisp of steam against her eyelids. Coffee, a latte with whole milk and a delicate heart-shaped design. The lines curve like ivy. She has a textbook open on the table. It’s some form of calculus. From behind the counter, Ron smiles at her, freckled skin crinkling, teeth white and slightly crooked. The table she’s seated at is close enough for him to talk to her.

“All good?” he asks. “I’ve never seen you take that long of a study break.”

He seems pleased that she might be staring off into space in his direction, like it’s a sign of her interest. It isn’t—it’s her adjusting into a new reality—and yet it is, because for once she cares less about her studies and more about the person in front of her who is a whole new person and then a very different one too. There isn’t magic here, she decides, and that already shifts everything.

“Coffee’s not as good as usual,” she lies.

He frowns. “It’s the same brew you like. I checked.”

“Guess you’ll have to do better on cup two,” she says with a small smile and holds her mug out.

He takes it and fingers the handle. There’s a look on his face that says that what he says next is going to be trial. And how she replies will change their course, forever.

“So you’re staying then?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, trying to stay light. There doesn’t need to be weight here. She’d prefer that there wasn’t. At least, that’s what she believes, though a part of her is already questioning how long lightness can last them. “I’ve got another chapter to revise anyway.” 

 

* * *

  

The part of Ron she has always had the most trouble with is the obvious history between them. When he steps out into his living room and embraces her, it feels more like _I’m glad to hold you, to know you’re safe_ rather than _I’m happy to see you._

She runs her fingers down his cheek, to his neck too.

“You’re getting new wrinkles, Ron,” she says.

“Your fault. Like always.”

She laughs and he hugs her close while they move to the small bed in the corner of her room. They tuck into a blanket there, falling into comforting patterns with their limbs wrapped around each other.

It’s good to be here with him, even though he doesn’t quite seem to fit into her little Romanian cottage. He’s meant to hold her hand in the velvet Gryffindor Common Room, to trail after in the stone corridors leading to McGonagall’s classroom. It isn’t that she wishes he was gone, but that it would be better if the two of them could be somewhere else, together.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to move forward,” she says into his shoulder, “when all I can think about is the past.”

He doesn’t respond, too caught up in the smell of her tangled hair. But also, after all this time Ron has learned. He doesn’t give her quick answers.

 

* * *

 

Ron is cleaning up the coffee shop, sweeping behind the counter. There are muffin crumbs and napkins and straw wrappers. She leans against the marble, near where the register is.

“Aren’t you done cleaning up yet?” she asks.

“Nah, the manager’s a real grump,” Ron replies. “He wants the place spotless.”

“What’re you doing once you’re off?”

Ron leans against the broom handle. It’s strange, she realizes, not to know much about him. Normally, she has an intuitive awareness of his schedule, whether or not he’s told her. It’s been like this since the early years of them knowing each other. He found her in whatever library stacks or classroom she’d holed up in. She had a sense of when he was visiting the kitchens or the Common Room or the Quidditch pitch.

It’s the appeal of this world, probably, that she gets to fall in love with a stranger.

How, though, is she supposed to fall for someone just by watching them work? Is it the muscles in his arms when he sponges down the counter? Is it the way he pokes his tongue through the crack in his lips when he steams the milk just so? Those things are endearing, but they’re not enough. They’re not like years of fighting and solving mysteries and nursing wounds.

 

* * *

 

Ron helps her chop carrots and potatoes for the stew. They don’t use their wands, because it prolongs the act of cooking together. No matter what, they both find making a home comforting.

“We should talk,” she says while the stew boils.

He scuffs his foot against the wood in her kitchen. He hates talking but he came to Romania so he must want to hear her say something.

“Do you remember,” he says, “that time you dyed Snape’s robes red in the middle of the Gryffindor-Slytherin match? What was that, third year?”

“Yeah,” she says and dips her spoon into the soup to taste it. She adds salt, but overall, they’ve made something worth eating. She starts to spoon their dinner out into bowls while he slices crusty bread. “What about it?”

“It’s just something I like to remember,” he says. “I was bloody shocked, you know. I mean, you were bonkers about giving teachers respect.”

A shared memory, she thinks, that doesn’t have to do with death or despair. Or blood or Avada Kedavra or the Dark Mark floating high in the sky, the molecules around it turning grey and ashy.

“I was trying to impress you,” she says. “And also, he’d taken fifteen points away from me the day before because my potion was so good it was insufferable.”

She is glad, though, that this is the memory he chooses to hold with him. She links her fingers through his and he squeezes. There is some beauty in not knowing each other, in being able to build up. But then—how beautiful too for him to know the strangest moments of her life, for him to hold onto those pieces like keys.

 

* * *

 

The coffee smell dissipates into warm beef and broth and carrots.


	3. Chapter 3

_Second Reality_

The house where she lives in this world is empty. The Time Turner always dumps her without backstory, but she has a sense, in the way that curtains are drawn, how the dust has settled on the wooden surfaces, that this Hermione is lonely.

On the table, a note, half-written:

_Dear Penelope, On behalf of the Weasleys, thank you for the beautiful flowers you sent. The service is next Tuesday, and we hope to see you there. I know Ron considered you family, after all._

Hermione blinks hard. It’s a scene that she imagined almost a thousand times in all the years that she’s known Ron and Harry. Somehow she always assumed she’d be the one left behind, seeing as most of the time she was the one mixing a potion not pulling a sword out of a hat. She figured it out be one of them or Ginny or even Luna or Neville, who were brave in their own ways.

It is bad no matter who it is. It was bad with Fred, Lupin, Tonks, all of them. But with Ron, she knows her life is changed irrevocably. Every gesture she shares with a partner will have a ghost of Ron. Every time she imagines a wedding, she will recall the time she and Molly came upon a sprig of petunias while in the garden and Molly had gasped and said how lovely they would be in a bouquet, held in hand while Hermione walked down the aisle.

 

* * *

 

         

They take walk along the Danube in the morning. It is grey, but a faint light is whispering on the horizon. Ron holds her hand, but his fingers are cold and hers are numb, and they can’t really feel each others’ skin, just know the touch is there.

“I never come here,” she tells him. “I’m in the house most of the time.”

“Studying, no doubt.”

“Researching, now.”

He reaches over and pulls the scarf up so it covers her mouth and part of her nose. The wool itches, but she nestles deeper anyway. In the other world, she is searching for comfort too. That’s when the lightning comes, a crack from a storm cloud. She should be used to the weather, temperamental as it can be, especially in an area of high magical density like the square mile of land she spends most of her time. And yet, she unholsters her wand in one snap of motion. She steps in front of Ron, just as he tries to cover her.

“It’s just the rain,” she says after a moment of tense shoulders.

“I thought,” he says and does not finish.

“Me too,” she says.

The rain starts to fall, but they don’t move to race inside. Both of them are still holding their wands white-knuckled. Ron’s breath heaves a little. She can feel the other world, but a third too—memories of the Battle of Hogwarts, curses flying through the air and illuminating the dead bodies.

A part of her wonders if she would’ve preferred to see a spell rather than just a glimmer of weather. It is hard to learn how to live without a quest, and someone following up on Samantha Noguchi’s notes isn’t the same as stopping a great evil. In fact, sometimes it makes her feel worse, less adequate, makes her wonder what is wrong with her. This moment in the rain, too, as Ron tugs her towards the house—that makes her question herself. Searching for a better life when she doesn’t even know the definition of that adjective.

 

* * *

 

 

Viktor comes to visit in the other reality. He wraps his arm around her shoulders and she cries a little into his chest. It doesn’t last long. But then, it all goes on, predictably, like it did it in the coffee shop too. There, he brought her coffee and she doodled her phone number on a napkin and when they kissed it was in front of the café door as was locking up. Here, Viktor stays to help her with the funeral preparations, assisting her when she chooses flowers, when she hires a quartet to sing a sad tune.

On the night before, he draws her into his heat and leans down. She tips her head up too, but she can’t help but think of Ron and slowly she pushes against Viktor’s chest. He takes a step back.

“I can’t,” she says, and sweeps into her bedroom to sleep.

When she wakes up, there’s a figure in the doorway. Ron, she understands immediately, but the ghost of him. The ghost reaches out his fingers and taps her cheekbone. They look at each other with understanding. He wants her to be happy; she misses him, but knows that she has to move forward or else she’ll stay in the backwards forever.

She whispers, like a sappy heroine, “I won’t forget you. I love you.”

The ghost inclines its head in the field outside the window. He looks back at her even as he floats through the mist, away. They both stare and stare and stare, romantic in their longing.

 

* * *

 

“What do you think your life would’ve been if I’d died?” she asks Ron back in the house. They are cramped into the bathtub, bony knees hitting so it hurts, but it helps bring the feeling back into their muscles.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he says, reaching for the soap.

“You must’ve thought about it. Like, when you left us, in the forest. Didn’t you wonder what would happen if I’d died?”

“Why do you want to know?”

He traces a spiral of white soap on her shoulder blade. She is pale, so pale, from too much time inside. How long has it been since she spent an afternoon in the sun. Too long, but she hasn’t had anyone to spread out on a picnic blanket with her. No one to share slices of brie and green grapes with. Though, she supposes, Ron would’ve come if she asked. There was nothing wrong except for her own desperate fear that their love wasn’t enough. That there was a flaw she wasn’t seeing.

“I want to know because sometimes I think it would’ve been easier if one of us were gone,” she whispers.

“Yeah.” He nods. “Maybe it would’ve been. Then we’d get to wallow instead of try to make it work.”

Samantha Noguchi has a passage in the journal on death. She writes: _When people were missing, I tried to understand if I was supposed to miss them or if just by remembering them, I had done enough. When you’ve lived in so many places, so many timelines, what does it matter any more? Who even is a person? One world can only hold some shades of a figure. After a while, I liked losing people and finding them again. The feeling was more powerful than the person._

Hermione wonders why Samantha Noguchi always wrote about someone else being lost. She wonders if Samantha Noguchi ever figured out that love can’t be replicated through brokenness.

 

* * *

 

 

In her other mind, the funeral passes. It goes on without a hitch, because both she and Molly are perfect planners and they know how to put on an event that honors the man and puts everyone at ease too. But she doesn’t dwell on the reality after it. Slowly, the haunting funeral melody is replaced by Ron humming a tune while he practices turning dust balls into moths.

And she wonders, what the use is of all the angst anyway? She prefers being able to kiss the sinew in his neck, not think about it being cut. What is it about sadness that spurs people on? When there is pain, the heart feels like it is constricting—although it probably isn’t. But is that the sensation everyone is chasing? Grief, Hermione thinks, as they both drift off to sleep, is a patterned emotion. She knows how to enact it, how to perform it. She knows how to find meaning in it, in a way she isn’t sure she can when everything moves onward well.


	4. Chapter 4

_Reality Three_

When she opens her eyes, everything is visible in shades of grey. For a moment she blinks, thinking it must be sleep clinging to her eyelids, but the lack of color remains. She is on the street, actually, in a small farmer’s market where she can buy zucchinis and tomatoes that are firm to the touch but whose look betrays very little without a vibrant, telling red.

“What color is this to you?” she demands of the stall owner.

“You asking if I’ve met my soul mate?” the man replies. “It’s red. Tomatoes’ve been red since Martha and I found each other, ten years ago.”

“Oh,” she says and his cuffs her shoulder gently.

“Maybe today’ll be the day,” the man tells her and then ushers her on.

She buys the tomato with the change she finds in her purse, and then moves on through the maze of stalls. She figures that Ron must be there, whatever version of Ron is in this world. The Time Turner always drops her off in a moment that seems integral to them both, apparently picking up on the vibrations of her most incessant questions.

She isn’t sure, though, if color will seep back once she finds him. Maybe in this world she and Ron aren’t meant to be at all. Maybe what’s going to happen is she will see him and none of the color will come back and she’ll know they aren’t meant to be, that there is someone else out there who can make her see everything anew.

 

* * *

 

 

They go out for dinner with Charlie that night, at a local place that he introduced her to. Hermione arranges the napkin in her lap and takes a long draw of water. Charlie is watching both her and Ron carefully, but he keeps talking about some dragon he brought over from the Philippines to train.

“You seem to really like her,” Ron says, cutting through his meat. “Good for you.”

“It’s almost like it was meant to be,” Charlie says. He gestures with his fork. “Like you two.”

“We weren’t meant to be,” Hermione says, and Ron recoils a little. “You know how I feel about Divination, Ron.”

“Oh,” he says, relaxing. “Yeah. Nothing’s meant to be. I dunno.”

“It took a lot,” she says.

Charlie shrugs a little, but she can’t believe that the two eleven year olds that met on the train were fated to end up here, in Romania after the war, both having survived, together. How could the two of them have known all that? And what would they have lost out on if they had known?

 

* * *

 

 

She sees Ron by a vase of daffodils, though it turns out he’s weighing potatoes out. His eyes, she notices first, so familiar to her, and then everything seems to move a few shades away from grey. The tomato in her hand becomes a gauzy pink, and then slowly brightens into a hotter red. Same as his hair. And the flowers, a bright yellow.

He comes up to her immediately, extending a hand.

“I’m Ron,” he says. “Did it—did it work for you?”

“The color?” she asks. “Yes. Do you think it means we’re meant to be together?”

He leans forward a little and tries to touch the skin of her inner wrist.

“Do you mind if I kiss you?” he asks.

In her real world, she was waiting for the day he would ask this, but it’s so strange for him to have the expectation only because of some phenomenon which probably could be explained by some form of science in the not-so distant future.

“Can’t we go on a date first?” she suggests.

He snorts, but nods and suggests they get coffee right then. And after, they can go to his flat so she can see what kind of person she’s meant to be with. He says all of this with such confidence, like nothing can go wrong. Everyone in this world found the person they love through the color test, it seems.

It would be easy, she thinks, to have a love like that, but then how can she be sure without testing and retesting their relationship? How can it be so easy and preordained? Does such a strict soul mate mean the rest of her life was just leading up to this meeting?

They walk arm in arm, but her shoulder is tense, her hip a careful three inches from his.

 

* * *

 

On the way home, they stop under an oak tree, press their hands against the bark. They are doing this more lately, pausing, enjoying the natural land when they can. It strikes her as odd sometimes, when she thinks too hard about why they are doing what they are doing, but a lot of the time it’s just for peace.

“When did you fall for me?” Ron asks her from behind the tree trunk. She can guess the expression on his face, a tiny smirk at the left corner, his eyes a little self-deprecating though.

“I don’t know,” she tells him truthfully. “Does it work like that, a spark that you can pinpoint?”

“I s’pose not,” he says and rests his cheek against the tree.

“It all comes at once or not at all,” she says, and it sounds like a quote, but she isn’t sure if it is. Maybe it’s from Samantha Noguchi’s writings.

“But it did happen. At some point,” Ron says.

Hermione holds onto the rolled sleeve of his shirt. He covers her hand with his own.

“After I knew you so well, how could I not?” she says.

 

* * *

 

 

In the journal, Samantha Noguchi writes: _There are people whom I was meant to meet and know in some worlds. That is heartening, But it also makes me wonder, is the me of that dimension the same as this one? And have I perpetually ruined her by adding my own consciousness to her? And in any case, are we meant to meet people as they were brought onto this earth, or do we love them because of who they can be for us in that moment, based on our experiences, our lifestyles, our hopes and dreams?_

In the other world, she and Ron watch a sunset, marveling over the way that the pink mixes with the gold. How the purple frames the scene. How the clouds turn into wisps of color and then disappear into the dark night sky. But in this world, she and Ron look at the stars and aren’t amazed that they see the same thing. She reminds him of the constellations he forgot; he tells her wizarding lore about planets far away. The difference between them, the fact that they aren’t the same, don’t fit exactly right, comforts her.


	5. Chapter 5

_It Goes On, Different_

When Ron asks her why she’s using the Time Turner, she puts her toothbrush down, spits out whatever’s in her mouth and turns to him, her face half-crumpling already. He’s only concerned, she sees immediately, probably reminded of the red half-moons pressed into her palms during their Third Year when she was taking too many classes, trying to handle too many things. He’d asked her a few times what was wrong and she’d snapped at him and everything had been too messy to handle.

"I’ve been researching them,” she says. “All the different things they can do.”

They sit on the bed together. He makes tea, this time uses his wand so he doesn’t have to move away from her. She explains, almost breathlessly all the places she’s been. Talked about what it was like to see them both as royalty. As Quidditch professionals—him a beater, she a manager, obsessed with creating a charity for children bitten by werewolves looking to join careers in sports.

“I don’t get it,” he says finally. “I don’t get what you were looking for. Isn’t it a bit boring?”

She stares at him. How long has it been since they were able to define ‘excitement’ as something positive? For too many years excitement has also meant the end of the world, responsibility that weighs heavy on Harry’s shoulders and by the transitive property, on hers and Ron’s too. Excitement means relationships shattered, a focus on the greater good instead of their own health and happiness.

“Our lives can’t all be chasing villains in dark alleyways, Ron. We have to—to give up on that someday. Or else we won’t survive,” she says to him.

Abruptly, he turns and walks out the door. She follows him on instinct; she hates letting him leave in the middle of an argument, which is a habit he used to have in their school days. He is kneeling in her garden, digging up a flower, and when he pulls on the stem, it comes out whole, with the roots like spindly veins. Clumps of dirt fall to the grass.

“What on earth are you doing? Why are you ruining my garden?” she asks, hands on hips. “I worked hard on that, you know.”

“Sorry,” he says, though he clearly isn’t very apologetic. Strangely, he looks happier than he has in his entire visit. She stalks up to him and grabs the flower from his hands. “But I kinda hated the whole thing. All those rows of perfect plants.”

“It looks nice,” she says. “Haven’t you ever read a gardening manual?”

“That’s the Hermione I’ve been looking for,” he says quietly. “You know you’ve been too nice the entire time I’ve been here. Not nice, more like quiet. Like you want everything to be right. Like we’re not allowed to yell or fight or shag or anything.”

Hermione lets the flower slip out of her hand. “I never took you for symbolism, Ron.”

In the diary, Samantha Noguchi writes: _The worlds I’ve been to are predictable. That makes me feel safe, like everything I am living is just a book that someone else wrote. That so many characters have gone through again and again. Patterns make for satisfying endings. That is my goal. An ending that makes the sore, painful surge in my chest relax._

Hermione sits in the dirt, feeling a patch of wet from the dew press into her robes. Ron joins her, seeming not to mind the damp soil. She leans again him, lets her whole body collapse in an unattractive slouch, like she would’ve when she was careless about their relationship, when she just allowed it to be, like in the early days after the war. They didn’t have the time or energy to think about what they were doing, they just did it.

“You’re not doing well,” Ron says.

“I don’t know how to adjust,” she replies. It feels good to say it.

“Me either. I gave up on it, mostly. But let me just say, I don’t think the answer’d be in whatever fantasy the Time Turner’s taking you to,” he says. “If I’ve learned anything watching other people, no one’s the same kind of in love from one week to the next, let alone the same as some other couple.”

She breathes heavily and lets the weight of what he’s just said sink into her.

“For so long we had all that chaos,” she says. “Can you blame me for wanting something that made too much sense?”

He nods and brushes his lips against her temples. He murmurs something comforting into her ear. She lifts her chin up a little so she can look at the sky, which stretches blue and wide. The breeze runs through Ron’s hair. His freckles stand out on his skin, the same pattern she’s always known. That’s a constant. The way he looks at her, a constant. The way she feels about him a singular, bright feeling too. Her doubts have never been about loving him, but about the circumstances around that connection.

She kisses him and the Time Turner quivers in her pocket, realizing, maybe how unneeded it really is. Her hope for this world is greater than her desire for another. And she hopes, so deeply, that Samantha Noguchi reached that anchoring, solid understanding one day.

In the last entry, she says: _I am a traveler, but when I find home, I will bring it with me wherever I go. I will not let it slip away from me. I will only let it get bigger; to encompass everything I find on my way so that the home I have is the one I build too._

           

 


End file.
